After declaring its lack of interest in joining Google‘s new Android Pay system for contactless, phone-based payments, UK bank Barclays announced that it would make up for this by creating a similar service of its own, building on the NFC support for its own Barclaycards already started earlier this year.

Mobile contactless payments are becoming an increasingly important and common feature nowadays, and following Apple‘s and Google‘s push with their respective systems, Samsung too has started to offer its service in Europe, starting with Spain…

Few things have made the case for an interesting use of the NFC chips inside our phones like contactless payments. Revived by Apple with the introduction of Apple Pay in late 2014, mobile-based transactions have seen an interesting resurgence ever since.

Companies like Samsung and LG have come up with proprietary solutions, but Android users have all found a home under Google‘s very own rooftop with Android Pay. Initially launched in the US alone, the service is now expanding, and after recent promises of a forthcoming launch, it looks like the green light for the UK may be imminent (via Telegraph)…

Mobile contactless payments are progressively becoming more and more mainstream as major manufacturers adopt systems that can be easily used via our smartphones. While LG Pay is yet to be seen in action, Google, Apple and even Samsung all have a technology – Android Pay, Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, respectively – that allows a user to complete transactions thanks to the NFC chips contained in most recent devices.

To this day, however, Apple Pay was the only service active in the United Kingdom, leaving a good number of consumers out of the industry, as more than half of the smartphones sold in the country run Android. According to a Telegraph report, however, sources close to the matter have confirmed that Android Pay should go live across Britain within the end of next month, approximately six months after the original US debut…

Samsung Pay will be available in China “as soon as early 2016” after the company signed a deal with card-processor UnionPay. The deal was an essential step as UnionPay has a monopoly on payment terminals in China. Apple yesterday announced its own deal with the company for Apple Pay.

Injong Rhee, Executive Vice President at Samsung Electronics said, “The collaboration with China UnionPay, coupled with the support from major UnionPay partner banks in China, will bring this secure and easy-to-use mobile payment solution to more Samsung mobile users.”

The deal will allow Samsung Pay users to use both swipe and contactless payment terminals, but there is still some red-tape to overcome first …

One of Samsung’s mobile execs has hinted that the company is planning to expand Samsung Pay to cheaper handsets eventually, according to a report by Korea Herald. Shin Jong-Kyun responded “it will gradually expand” when asked specifically if it would move the payment technology to budget handsets at some point.

Samsung Pay is Sammy’s attempt to compete with the likes of Android Pay and Apple Pay in the mobile contactless payment market. The one thing it has on both those platforms, however, is that you can use it virtually anywhere that has a magnetic card strip readers, rather than being limited to just NFC payments like Google’s and Apple’s systems. Its biggest restriction is handset support. Once it’s officially live, Samsung Pay will only work on the Galaxy Note 5, S6 Edge plus, S6 and S6 Edge. For a company with the product portfolio Samsung has, that’s restrictive to say the least, especially if it wants Samsung Pay to become widely adopted and used frequently.